Calm follows storm as second Test approaches

Cricket, like all sports, is insular. Yet not even the usual whirl of call-ups, injury scares and whingeing left-arm spinners could keep the real world from banging on the gates of Edgbaston this week.

The sight of Shane Warne undergoing a body search on his way back from nets yesterday was a blunt reminder that security remains a priority, especially after warnings that future attacks may not be aimed solely at London.

But it was Thursday's tornado that came closest to scuppering this Test. If it had passed another few miles to the west, said Edgbaston groundsman Steve Rouse, there would be nothing left of the brick-shaped pavilion, an all-wooden structure built in the late 19th century. (Whether that would be a bad thing, architecturally speaking, must be open to question.)

Though grateful for the near miss, Rouse was alarmed by the outlying clouds, hovering around the tornado's spout, which dumped an inch of water on his outfield in a minute. The covers were instantly afloat.

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While Rouse has kept his Test strip clear of county action, he had no answer to such extreme weather, and has now been saddled with a pitch four days behind schedule. Yesterday's clear skies helped him out slightly by baking the top layer. But it sounds as if nothing short of a passing comet will cook it all the way through.

"There's a crust on the top, about an eighth-of-an-inch thick," Rouse said yesterday. "But once you get through that layer, the ground is so soft that you could drive a spike all the way in. There's a good chance that the surface will dent on the first day, and then tall bowlers who hit the deck will make the ball bounce un-evenly. They will have to hit a decent length, mind you - if they bowl too short, the ball may never get through to the keeper.

"I've been devastated about this. You have to tell yourself it's all part of the job, but sometimes you wonder whether it's all worth it."

Despite his misfortune last week, Rouse does have previous where up-and-down pitches are concerned. Edgbaston has been the scene of some notorious minefields, notably in 1995, when Curtly Ambrose's first ball to Mike Atherton pitched on a length and flew clean over the wicketkeeper's head for four byes.

Five years later, when the West Indies returned to Birmingham, they were again the beneficiaries of uneven conditions, which helped them to win by an innings.

This week's pitch is likely to be a little slower, yet there is still a case for selecting the kind of tall quick bowlers that the West Indies used to specialise in. Bowlers who are liable to get the ball up around the batman's ribs and elbows, threatening them with physical damage. Bowlers, in other words, like Hampshire's Chris Tremlett.

The one man playing down the part conditions might play was Australia coach John Buchanan. "I've spoken to John Inverarity [the Western Australian who is Warwickshire's director of cricket]," he said yesterday, "and I expect it to be a pretty good cricket wicket. Whatever is produced, we'll deal with it."

Such confidence is hardly surprising, given that the Aussies already have a Test win and plenty of other moral victories under their belts. The four bowlers in their new-look attack have spent only one match together, yet they are beginning to give off a certain monolithic feeling. One senses that Messrs McGrath, Lee, Gillespie and Warne would all play whether the game was being staged on a peat bog or the surface of the moon.

Perhaps the only concern, given the quartet's collective age of 128 years, is the rapid turnaround between this Test and the third match at Old Trafford three days later.

"Everybody will be tested by this schedule, particularly the bowlers," Buchanan said. "But one of our strengths is that individuals are able to front up game after game. By the end of this 14-day period we'll know how big the gap between these two sides is."